Sunday, November 29, 2015

Why I switched to an IDE instead of Sublime text editor, and you should too!

Yes I know, I have always been a huge fan and supporter of Sublime Text 3 text editor and all of the various plugins, but I am moving away from text editors in general and here's why.

NOTE: When I say IDE's, I really don't mean just any IDE, I mean Webstorm for Javascript, and Rubymine for Ruby. If you are using other IDE's like Eclipse, then I think there isn't nearly the advantage that Webstorm and Rubymine give you.

IDEs do more than text editors, even Sublime Text 3 with all the plugins I had installed.
IDEs help you code easier and faster and have more code intelligence with refactoring and which files you changed on Git in an easier format.

Honestly though there is really only one reason that I switched to IDEs in the past year. This is something that most people will never actually admit, but really is one of those 'dirty' truths of the real world:

If you are dealing with a huge code base that is crappily written or are working with 'spaghetti style' written code, an IDE will save you SO much time and frustration. This is the main reason I switched. The ability to simply hit 'command + b' and follow spaghetti code quickly to see where it goes and try to wrap your brain around it as quickly as possible. Now you may be thinking that this is stupid to switch to an IDE because you deal with crappy code everyday, but as much as you people want to deny it, it is the reality.

The other reason I switched to an IDE is that it made finding errors much faster and the colors changed on the methods depending on whether or not the method had issues (like I had a typo). In a nutshell speed and convenience to deal with crap code written by many people over many years is why I switched to an IDE. If you only deal with code written by 'code angels' then please by all means stay with a text editor.

After saying the above, let me be clear that I absolutely LOVE Sublime Text 3 and use it to open files from the command line or use VI if I am SSHing to a server.

The above is 100% true. There are 2 types of coding that I've seen since getting into tech, the real world coding that I see in the 'wild' and then there is the tutorial code. The code written when people are giving a tutorial and are able to spend an unlimited amount of time to refactor the code. That is not to be negative, just to say the reason why I switched to Webstorm and RubyMine.

The real reason people don't want to switch to an IDE is that most IDEs actually suck. If you want an awesome IDE they cost too much money. The only way around that is to hack the IDE which I don't do and don't recommend. The other method is to use a 30 day trial version on a Virtual Box and then simply keep resetting the date back every 30 days so that you have in essence an unlimited trial version. I also do not recommend that method either.

My RubyMine IDE and Webstorm IDE are 100% legit and I did not spend any money to get the IDE legal registrations. I am not going to tell you how I did this, only know that I did absolutely NOTHING unethical and in fact 100% legal to accomplish my goal of getting 2 IDEs for free and registered in my name 'Joshua Kemp'.

The reason I am not going to tell you how I did it is simple, it's NOT rocket science what I did and also I want you to realize that actually the reason you are still using a text editor is because of the cost. If it weren't for the cost, then you would be using the latest and greatest IDE.

If that is the case, then you should NOT let the money issue stand in your way, you need to pony up the money and pay for the IDE license or figure out another legal way. I really recommend a good IDE and think every beginner learning to code should use one.